Musical Borrowing Under Scrutiny

Suggestions that Osvaldo Golijov, one of today’s most sought-after composers, improperly incorporated the work of another composer have stirred up a squall in classical music circles.

Critics have weighed in on the subject, prompting a discussion of what exactly is this strange thing called the creative process and whether audiences know exactly what they are getting when an orchestra puts a new piece on the program.

The controversy prompted a flurry of sometimes conflicting explanations from Mr. Golijov’s defenders and collaborators. On Wednesday, in a telephone interview, Mr. Golijov broke three weeks of silence and offered a spirited defense of his methods.

In composing his overture “Sidereus,” the Argentine-born Mr. Golijov was said to have borrowed excessively from a work for accordion and ensemble, “Barbeich,” by Michael Ward-Bergeman, a composer, accordionist and close friend.

Mr. Golijov, however, said that both works, as well as a string quartet he recently wrote, were partly derived from several discarded minutes of a film score that the two composers collaborated on. That movie was “Tetro,” a 2009 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Mr. Golijov has the film credit for original score, although, he said, Mr. Ward-Bergeman helped out on sections.

“There was this beautiful material,” Mr. Golijov said. “It didn’t work for the movie, but it worked for music. We decided both: ‘Let’s grab it. Each one can do what he wants.’ ” He said that the two had worked so closely on the scene that it was impossible to separate who wrote what. “Joint ideas, joint material, same room,” he said.

Mr. Golijov won a pair of Grammys in 2007 for his opera “Ainadamar” and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003. He will be in residence at Carnegie Hall next season and will be an artistic adviser to its Latin American festival.

He has long been known for his magpie technique of borrowing from various sources and different musical traditions. And borrowing from other composers in classical music is as traditional as a Gregorian chant. Bach, Schubert and Beethoven all did it.

“Sidereus,” the subject of this fracas, is a nine-minute overture by Mr. Golijov that was commissioned by a consortium of 35 orchestras to honor a music industry official, Henry Fogel. Mr. Fogel is the former president of the League of American Orchestras, whose board put up $50,000 toward the commission. The orchestras put up another $70,000, said Ryan Fleur, president of the Memphis Symphony and coordinator of the commission. Mr. Golijov received $75,000, with the rest of the money going to production costs.

Tom Manoff, a composer and NPR music critic, wrote in his blog that “at least half of the piece” was known to him as “Barbeich” by Mr. Ward-Bergeman, a work for accordion and ensemble.

Alex Ross, a critic for The New Yorker, said, “To put it bluntly, ‘Sidereus’ is ‘Barbeich’ with additional material attached.”

A politic Mr. Golijov said that Mr. Ross’s description was “not inaccurate,” but continued: “The question is, What is ‘Barbeich’? What did ‘Barbeich’ come from?”

The orchestra league and Mr. Golijov’s publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, have stood behind the composer.

“Sidereus” has been traveling the country since its first performance by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in 2010. Next up is a rendition by the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, an amateur group in Brookline, Mass., on March 17.

Photo

The Orchestra of St. Luke's performing Osvaldo Golijov's “Ainadamar” at Carnegie Hall in 2008. The composer, center, is involved in a controversy surrounding another work, “Sidereus.”Credit
Rachel Papo for The New York Times

The matter came to light as a result of weird serendipity. Mr. Manoff said he attended a concert by the Eugene Symphony in Oregon with the trumpet player Brian McWhorter to hear a performance of a Haydn trumpet concerto. “Sidereus” happened to be on the program.

And it also happened that Mr. McWhorter had recorded trumpet lines for “Barbeich” and had taken a recording to Mr. Manoff, who has a recording studio, for remixing. Mr. Manoff said he had spent 30 hours with “Barbeich.”

“As the phrases unfolded, McWhorter and I would turn to one another with a genuine sense of shock,” Mr. Manoff wrote on his blog. “Our spontaneous reactions were also surreal and even funny. After the concert we asked each other, ‘Did this really happen?’ ”

“For the ‘Moon’ theme,” Mr. Golijov wrote, “I used a melody with a beautiful, open nature, a magnified scale fragment that my good friend and longtime collaborator, accordionist Michael Ward-Bergeman, came up with some years ago when we both were trying to come up with ideas for a musical depiction of the sky in Patagonia.” That, he said in the interview, referred to a scene in the film.

James McQuillen wrote the program notes for the Eugene Symphony performance, based on the description. “I feel suckered,” he said in a blog posting.

Mr. Golijov acknowledged that using the word “melody” was a simplification. “I thought that was enough,” he said.

Mr. Ward-Bergeman issued a statement early on during the controversy, saying: “Osvaldo and I came to an agreement regarding the use of ‘Barbeich’ for ‘Sidereus.’ The terms were clearly understood, and we were both happy to agree.”

Mr. Golijov said that in retrospect the statement was confusing in light of their film collaboration. “I think we could have clarified this earlier,” he said.

In an e-mail to The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Ward-Bergeman declined to discuss his agreement with Mr. Golijov, saying the terms were “confidential, and frankly irrelevant.” He also blamed the “impoverishment of our culture and media” for “judging the artistic process” of a master like Mr. Golijov.

“Dialogue, collaboration and appropriation are not only the lifeblood of all great art;” he said. “They are the very quintessence of culture itself.”

The flurry of blog posts prompted a Brazilian journalist to report her own sighting of borrowed material in a Golijov work. The journalist, Lúcia Guimarães, wrote that she telephoned Mr. Golijov about the presence of a well-known Brazilian melody in the second movement of his string quartet “Kohelet.”

As a result Mr. Golijov “withdrew the melody,” she wrote. Mr. Golijov confirmed that he replaced the movement with another. He said he wanted the melody to appear as a “half-remembered dream,” and that since a listener recognized it so immediately, “then it is a problem for me.” But he noted that all music comes from other music, and “nothing comes from nothing.”

Some of Mr. Golijov’s critics have suggested that he recycled the “Barbeich” music because of pressure to make a deadline (he has a penchant for missing them) or because he was running out of inspiration. Mr. Golijov rejected those accusations.

In the interview he acknowledged often being late with commissions and going through dry patches. “Composers shouldn’t be judged by being late,” he said, “but by being good.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 8, 2012, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Musical Borrowing Under Scrutiny. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe